What follows is a portion of a rather half-assed journal of my summer trip through Europe.
Berlin. Wednesday. 11:00.
I’m walking through the Tiergarten and I’m falling in love with Berlin. I’m not falling in love with Berlin for the same reason that people fall in love with, say, Paris, which happens because Paris is mostly consistent – slow-moving and lazy and charming in the way a little girl in a dirty dress is charming. Berlin isn’t like that. Berlin is schizophrenic and indecisive and unpredictable.
Four days ago, I was in another city I like very much – Copenhagen. It was Saturday night and the last for my brothers and I to be together after a ten-day trip through Sweden and Denmark. After our mother left the city center for our hotel in Kastrup, the three of us located the bar with the $2 Jager shots before adjourning to Copenhagen’s streets, where we drank Carlsberg and talked about life in ways that we hadn’t really ever done before. (European cities will do that to brothers.)
Around eleven, we set out for the Kodbyen, Copenhagen’s meatpacking district. We’d been told that the Kodbyen was the place to be on the weekend; when we got there, we were doubtful that we’d been given good information. Our first stop was a hipster bar that – to the good – sold $4 beers and – to the bad – was empty. We moved on to a place that wouldn’t let Brother 2 inside because he’s not yet 23, marking the first time in my life that I’ve ever seen a bar try to artificially increase the age of its patrons beyond what is required by law.
So, with hopes low, we moved to our final stop, a tiny but packed bar that had the best DJ in the entire world. We found dance partners. (Because, by the principle of Rhythm Relativity, in Scandinavia, Americans who can’t dance well become humans who are excellent dancers.) Mine was half-Swedish and half-Danish and had locked eyes with me as soon as we walked in. Brother 2’s was significantly older than he is. (Take that, 23+ bar!) And Brother 1’s was a tough catch – he got her by out-dancing the guy she was with.
After running through several 90’s rap faves (still the best move, if you’re considering taking up DJing), the DJ played the song that made me think of Copenhagen while walking through the biggest park in Berlin.
That song was Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing In The Name” – not normally a song one associates with romance, joy, or happiness. Witness, for example, the lyric, “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.” But the crowd’s reaction to the song, in that bar in Copenhagen, said otherwise. As people – including the entire bar staff, 3 Shirley brothers, and a whole bunch of Danes and other assorted Europeans – bounced off each other with beaming smiles, I could only think of joy, beauty, and happiness.
Berlin has a certain amount of Fuck You I Won’t Do What You Tell Me to it. Before my walk through the Tiergarten, I was at the Victory Tower, a 200-foot high monument to war that all but screams, “Hey Paris, take your Arc de Triomphe and stick it in your cul.” The tower is so big and overdone that it could only be German.
But right alongside the Victory Tower: the Tiergarten. Smack in the middle of a bustling city, a park that’s as wild as the Black Forest and, in its own way, just as beautiful as Central Park.
Berlin is massive and sprawling and unafraid to present the visitor with the occasional foreboding edifice; more American than most European cities, in this way. Like “Killing In The Name”, it doesn’t necessarily set out to be beautiful. Oh sure, there are the parks, gardens, and architecture that will sometimes make the visitor think he’s in Italy. Just like, at the end of “Killing In The Name”, after Zack de la Rocha has been screaming at his audience for four minutes, that same audience is treated to what turns out to be a damn fine dance song.
It’s a city of contrast, of beauty that comes about in a mortal, sometimes clumsy way. I love that contrast. I love the inconsistency. I love that Berlin is beautiful, in a Fuck You kind of way.
For the previous Euro Bits entry, click here.
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